ABSTRACT

Of no days of our childhood did we live so fully perhaps as those we thought we had left behind without living them, those that we spent with a favourite book. (Marcel Proust, On Reading)

They’d quite simply forgotten what makes a book and what books have to offer. They’d forgotten, for example, that the novel, first and foremost, tells a story. They didn’t realise that a novel must be read as a novel, to quench, first and foremost, their thirst for narrative. To lessen the pangs of their thirst, they’d long since turned to the small screen, which was doing its assembly-line job, stringing together cartoons, series, soap operas, and thrillers, in an endless chain of interchangeable stereotypes. It would fill their heads in the same way as they’d stuff their bellies, satiating but not sustaining the body. Digestion would be immediate, and they’d feel just as alone. (Daniel Pennac (1994) Reads like a Novel)

Overview

In Chapters 3 and 4, I analysed data from the survey to identify differences in the numbers of girls and boys who chose particular kinds of reading. I next discussed differences in the ways in which they organized and shared reading with others. In doing this, I revealed a pattern of developing reading habits strongly marked by gender difference. In this chapter, I intend to widen the discussion to include a consideration of further differences created by teachers’ selections of class novels in comparison with those pupils recorded in the questionnaires. Data related to books used as class readers were collected during periods of classroom observation and supported by evidence from the interviews. I shall consider the ways in which pupils might be expected to respond to these books, juxtaposing this with further evidence from the questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews, both of which show the kinds of responses that current reading habits actually encourage.